Andrew Blum, MD, PhD

Research Information

Research Interests

Throughout his career, Dr. Blum has developed an interest in the prevention and treatment of cancer, which combined naturally with an interest in clinical gastroenterology, and specifically with an interest in esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) and its development from Barrett’s esophagus (BE). During fellowship and as a junior faculty member, Dr. Blum led two projects utilizing whole transcriptome sequencing data generated as part of the Barrett’s Esophageal Translational Network (BETRNet). First, Dr. Blum and colleagues characterized transcriptionally-viable gene-fusion landscapes in EACs. Next, they identified the TGF-ß/Smad signaling pathway as a promoter of EAC carcinogenesis by combining the whole transcriptome data with innovative mathematical modeling. Dr. Blum's ongoing work is focused defining the molecular basis for the oncogenic role of TGF-ß/Smad signaling in BE and EAC.